A Short Letter by Humboldt to Jefferson

Reinhard Andress

Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Volume 15, Issue 1,

Winter 2017, pp. 224-228 (Article)

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2017.0007

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/647921

Access provided by Latin American Studies Association (12 Jul 2018 23:11 GMT)
 A Short Letter by Humboldt to Jefferson
REINHARD ANDRESS
Loyola University, Chicago

abstract At the tail end of his monumental trip of exploration and

scientific discovery through Latin America from 1799 to 1804, the
German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt visited President Thomas
Jefferson in Washington. United by their common interests in the
Enlightenment, they began a correspondence that endured until 1825.
This contribution discusses a letter of 1811 by Humboldt to the former
president, hitherto unpublished in English. Aside from closing a gap in
their correspondence, the letter, although short, offers an illuminating
insight into Humboldt’s personal, political, and scientific networks, which
included such figures as Abbé José Correia da Serra and Joel Barlow, who
were involved in his simple request for tobacco and seeds.

The 1911 endowment of the American business magnate Edward Ayer

(1841–1927) to the Newberry Library in Chicago contains a short letter
written by Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). A comparison of the
handwriting makes the document readily attributable to the German
explorer and naturalist, especially the characteristically slightly slanted lines
that were a consequence of his writing on his knee, a habit Humboldt had
acquired during his Latin American trip. Lacking an addressee, the letter
consists of the following text (see figure 1):

Pour ne pas ouvrir une longue lettre que j’ai eu l’honneur de Vous adresser par
l’entremise de Mr Correa, j’ose Vous écrire une seconde fois, pour Vous incommoder
d’une prière. Auriez-Vous la grâce, Monsieur, de m’envoyer pour Monsieur Barlow
dix livres de graines de tabac de Virginie et 4 livres de tabac de Maryland. C’est un
cadeau de la plus haute importance pour moi. Daignez agréer l’assurance réitérée de
mon attachement respectueux et de ma vénération profonde.

Early American Studies (Winter 2017)

Copyright  2017 The McNeil Center for Early American Studies. All rights reserved.

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 Andress • A Short Letter by Humboldt to Jefferson 225

Humboldt.
Paris
à l’Observatoire
Rue St Jacques
ce 26 Dec
18111

It can now be established that the letter was formulated as a kind of

postscript to a longer missive Humboldt had penned to Thomas Jefferson
six days earlier. Jefferson’s response, written in English on December 6,
1813, acknowledges receipt of both letters and includes a promise to send
the tobacco and seeds, thus conclusively identifying the addressee of the
short communication that for over one hundred years has been buried in
the Newberry Library’s archives.2 My recent piece for a German-language
publication dedicated to Humboldt studies explains in greater detail the
historical context and significance of the letter, a primary source that also
merits consideration by readers of Early American Studies.3
Near the end of his voyage to the Americas (1799–1804), Humboldt
visited President Jefferson in Washington, where they engaged in a lively
exchange about a host of matters connected with their mutual scientific,
social, and political interests, as would have befitted two such luminaries of
the Enlightenment. More specifically, and in light of his recent purchase of
the Louisiana Territory and its disputed border with Mexico, Jefferson was

1. In order not to open a long letter I had the honor of addressing you through
the intervention of Mr Correa, I dare write to you a second time to bother you with
a request. Would you be so kind, Monsieur, as to send me through Monsieur Bar-
low ten pounds of tobacco seeds from Virginia and 4 pounds of tobacco from Mary-
land. It is a gift of the utmost importance to me. Please accept the repeated
assurance of my respectful devotion and of my profound veneration. Humboldt.
Paris
The Observatory
Rue St Jacques
this 26th of December
1811
2. Ingo Schwarz, ed., Alexander von Humboldt und die Vereinigten Staaten. Brief-
wechsel. Beiträge zu Alexander-von-Humboldt-Forschung, vol. 19 (Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 2004), 130.
3. Reinhard Andress, “Eine Bitte an Thomas Jefferson um Tabaksamen und
Tabak: Ein unveröffentlichter Brief Alexander von Humboldts,” International
Review for Humboldtian Studies 17, no. 32 (2016), www.hin-online.de/index.php/
hin/article/view/229/433.

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226 Early American Studies • Winter 2017

Figure 1. Letter from Alexander von Humboldt to Thomas Jefferson,

December 26, 1811.

very keen to find out what Humboldt knew about the Spanish colony, infor-
mation the German willingly shared, while Humboldt in turn was fasci-
nated by the experiment of freedom in the newly established republic of the
United States. The two men greatly respected and admired each other, and
after Humboldt returned to Europe, a correspondence ensued that lasted
from 1808 to 1825. In her recent study of their friendship, Sandra Rebok

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 Andress • A Short Letter by Humboldt to Jefferson 227

concludes that the extended exchange between Jefferson and Humboldt

“offers insight into the development of political thought and the progress
of science” and “also serves as an early demonstration of the importance of
transatlantic communication and scientific cooperation.”4 The short note
Humboldt sent on Boxing Day 1811 offers a glimpse into aspects of that
communication and scientific cooperation across the Atlantic.
It is not clear if Humboldt ever received the tobacco and seeds he
requested, especially given the disruptive effect of the Napoleonic Wars on
shipping, but he probably wanted them for the extensive botanical research
he was conducting in connection with his Relation historique du voyage
aux régions équinoxiales du nouveau continent (1814–25). This multivolume
work, wherein Humboldt processed the plethora of scientific information
he had gathered during his American travels, includes several references to
the history, culture, and growth of tobacco that reflected his abiding interest
in that specific plant.5
The letter is also noteworthy because the “Mr Correa” who was to trans-
port the request for tobacco and seeds refers to another important figure,
Abbé José Correia da Serra (1751–1823),6 a well-known Portuguese philos-
opher, diplomat, politician, and scientist, who was making his mark in the
arena of the natural classification of plants that was analogous to a concur-
rent development in comparative anatomy.7 At the time of the letter, the
abbé was on his way to the United States, where, thanks to a letter of
recommendation given him by Humboldt, he gained access to the high
scientific circles of the American Philosophical Society, and he later became
Portugal’s envoy to the young nation. A friendship would ensue with Jeffer-
son, whom Correia visited annually in Monticello before he eventually
returned to Portugal.

4. Sandra Rebok, Humboldt and Jefferson: A Transatlantic Friendship of the

Enlightenment (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), 141.
5. See Alexander von Humboldt, Relation historique du voyage aux régions équinox-
iales du nouveau continent (1814–25; repr., Stuttgart: F. A. Brockhaus, 1970),
2:622–23.
6. Correa was the Spanish version of the abbé’s name.
7. See Richard Beale Davis, “The Abbé Correa in America, 1812–1820: The
Contributions of the Diplomat and Natural Philosopher to the Foundations of Our
National Life. Correspondence with Jefferson and Other Members of the American
Philosophical Society and with Other Prominent Americans,” Transactions of the
American Philosophical Society, n.s., 45, no. 2 (1955): 87–197; Maria Paula Diogo,
Ana Carneiro, and Ana Simões, “The Portuguese Naturalist Correia da Serra
(1751–1823) and His Impact on Early Nineteenth-century Botany,” Journal of the

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228 Early American Studies • Winter 2017

The “Monsieur Barlow” of the letter, through whom Humboldt re-

quested the tobacco and seeds be sent to Paris, is the familiar personage of
Joel Barlow (1754–1812), an American patriot, diplomat, and poet, whose
scientific interests included the areas of mineralogy and agriculture.8 Barlow
is probably best known as the author of an epic poem praising the young
United States, Vision of Columbus (1787), which he reworked as The Colum-
biad (1807). By 1811, when Humboldt sent his note, Barlow was in Paris
as the American envoy charged with negotiating a trade agreement with
Napoleon.9
Clarifying the identity of the addressee and intended recipient of Hum-
boldt’s short epistle provides a hitherto missing piece of the correspondence
between the two. Moreover, the inclusion of Correia and Barlow as actors
in the circumstances that it documents both confirms and delineates the
existing networks that could be called on in the name of science. That
Humboldt could enjoy and employ contacts of such note and repute in his
simple request for tobacco and seeds is indeed striking.

History of Biology 34 (2001): 353–93; Edgardo Medeiros Silva, “The Powerless

Diplomacy of the Abbé Correia da Serra,” Anglo Saxonica 3, no. 1 (2010): 343–60.
8. See Samuel Bernstein, Joel Barlow: A Connecticut Yankee in an Age of Revolu-
tion (Cliff Island, Maine: Ultima Thule Press, 1985); Richard Buel, Joel Barlow:
American Citizen in a Revolutionary World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2011); Peter P. Hill, Joel Barlow: American Diplomat and Nation Builder
(Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2012).
9. In the attempt to catch up with the emperor during his invasion of Russia,
Barlow was swept back with Napoleon’s retreat and caught pneumonia. He died in
Zarnowiec, close to Cracow, before he was able to complete his task.

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